Well, it’s more than likely ISPs will have tiers, and those users who opt for the higher tiers – and pay the most – will have access to everything, while lower tiers will restrict content.

Riad Chikhani, the founder and chief executive officer at GAMURS Group, a leading esports media network which hopes to shape the future of gaming, and the parent company of Dot Esports, said that net neutrality was important for smaller companies.

“Having a level playing field is essential to the growth of the industry as a whole. Smaller companies rely heavily on net neutrality to be able to compete with the more established players with bigger audiences and resources,” he said.

But it might not be as catastrophic as one might think. Not yet, anyway.

According to BroadbandNow, a Texas-based startup which aims to help people find internet providers in their area, it may be a while until the average Joe is hit.

“In the short term, it probably won’t affect you much at all,” said Jameson Zimmer, director of content at the company.

“Non-neutral practices like Zero-Rating – which is when an ISP doesn’t place caps on certain services but caps others – have been going on for years under the radar, and there’s no reason for companies to suddenly start changing policies since they want to avoid consumer outrage in the short term.

“From a regular guy standpoint, you could actually expect prices on services you use to go down in some cases since it would be easier for a company to offer discounts for unlimited access to applications they partner with.

“Whether or not ISPs will actually go this route is still totally conjecture, though.”

He added: “The big question is what if any regulations will crop up over the next few years to deal with consumer concerns about “fast lanes” and similar practices that are still mostly theory/conjecture.”

Not all bad news, just yet.

But one thing is for sure: there are a lot of people out there who support net neutrality – for good reasons. Though despite this, it doesn’t look like it will be coming back anytime soon.

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